During ideation and strategic thinking exercises, we use individual, colorful sticky notes in great quantities to capture new ideas and comments. This contrasts with keeping meeting notes on a single big white easel pad. We employ colorful sticky notes so aggressively because they provide a variety of advantages for strategic thinking exercises through effectiveness and efficiency.

Sticky notes allow:

Sustainability – written ideas gain tangibility and “life,” moving beyond dependence on someone remembering the creative idea for something to happen with it.

Portability – individual sticky note ideas can be moved from one place to another for sharing, further work, or later electronic capture.

Visibility – creative ideas can be displayed on walls in the meeting room so all participants can review and consider them, even if they weren’t in the sub-team that generated the idea.

Combinations – in moving an idea written on a sticky note, you can arrange and group multiple ideas to trigger new ideas, develop / clarify emerging themes, or create a natural sequence.

Separation – the opposite of combining ideas, a sticky note’s portability allows participants to review ideas and select those they find intriguing and may want to advocate for development.

Boundaries – different colors, shapes, and sizes allow you to subtly distinguish between the output of various exercises or teams.

Ranking – individual ideas can be placed on a matrix or ranked on a single criterion, allowing a group to interactively and quickly prioritize ideas that are more attractive.

Revisiting – because the idea has been given initial tangibility through being written, it can be revisited during or after a session so that opportunities not emerging right away still have the possibility of being identified later.

Disposal – you can also easily recycle sticky notes when you’re done with them.

So if you want to help make your ideas stick (and not stick), get yourself some sticky notes.